


Love and Great Buildings

by peterplanet



Category: Harrison Osterfield - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-09 05:11:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18631477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peterplanet/pseuds/peterplanet
Summary: in which harrison is in madly in love with her and wants to show her how much she means to him. requested anonymously.





	Love and Great Buildings

Harrison knew that he loved her when she stumbled into their bedroom with bleary eyes and a heavy heart. She had been broken, eyes dark and her words catching each other as they stumbled and fell from her lips. It had been the first time that he would ever remember her being broken in front of him and it had been the first time that he would ever remember thinking that he loved her.

He had entertained the thought briefly, danced with it as he tried to make sense of her meaning so much to him. At that point, they’d only been together for a few months. They’d moved in together relatively quickly, mainly because her lease was up, and her landlord made her feel uncomfortable. And while Haz wouldn’t usually move in with a girl so fast, wouldn’t dare to let her see him in such an intimate sense—he thinks, really, that living with someone is to see them at their most vulnerable—but something about her had felt so  _different_.

And maybe it was a cliché thought; in hindsight, he sees why people hesitate to admit how they knew that they were in love. He understands why people are flushed cheeks and hesitant smiles as they say that they “just  _knew_ ” that they were in love. It doesn’t make sense unless you’ve lived through it. It could never make sense unless you have experienced it.

He saw her, that night, vulnerable for the first time. When everything had fallen apart, when her mum had called to say that her dad was at A&E for the night because of a kidney stone, the first person that she had wanted to see that night was Haz. It’s this thought, the idea that in her most vulnerable form she had still chosen him, that makes him realize just how whipped he is for her.

Harrison’s mum always used to tell him that love was something you felt. He heard this idea played out on television programs, in movies, in the novels that he’d read when he had a moment to himself; it was a piece of the society that he lived in and something that he had grown to accept. A piece of him had always thought of that as bullshit, as nothing more than fairy-tales and mythology created to ease little children into the concept of the birds and the bees. And maybe that’s cynical—he can hear (Y/N)’s voice telling him that it’s just that every time that the thought crosses his mind—but he’d be lying if he said that he didn’t, that he hadn’t thought of love in that way.

And then he had met (Y/N). Vulnerable, easy-to-read, starry-eyed, open-hearted (Y/N). He could alphabetize lists on her most notable qualities, could write sonatas on the way that her (e/c) eyes shone when they focused on him long enough. He would do whatever it took to make her feel as beautiful as she was in his eyes. If she could see herself as something more than her two am thoughts of who she was, if Haz could be the one to make her feel that truth resonate in her bones, he would give up his life. If it meant that she could love herself in the same way that he loved her, even if that meant that she could never love him again as she learned to love her broken heart and hollow bones, then he would give that up. For her confidence, he would give her up.

Their love story was not perfect. It was not daisies and roses, flowery stories of how they met at a coffee-shop with bumped limbs and spilled beverages. It was not void of any arguments, was not free of late-night tears and bumbling apologies from drunken lips. Moving in together so early into their relationship had put a lot of stress on them, and any normal couple would not have survived that type of stress. But (Y/N) had been determined to make things work for them. Every time that Haz had wanted to give up, every time that he thought that  _she_ would want to give up, she had persisted. She had talked it out, given him as much space as she needed, and had always been the rock of their relationship. If he had been with any other girl, it wouldn’t have worked, it couldn’t have worked.

But she wasn’t any other girl. She was (Y/N), and that made all the difference.

So, as Haz stands with her at the little bistro where they had their first date, he can feel his palms beginning to sweat. They’ve been together for three years now and there’s always been a nagging idea between them that they’re each other’s forever. Each of them is the person that the other will wake up to for the rest of their lives, the other parent to their children, and they’ve discussed it in great detail before.

She wants a son with her nose and his striking blue eyes. He wants a daughter with her (h/c) locks and his face. They both want a family of healthy, happy, well-loved children and they want those children  _together_. While he’s had his doubts throughout their relationship, he’s always known that she was the one for him. If they had broken up, if they hadn’t been each other’s forever, Haz knows that he wouldn’t have been able to move past her and the ideas of their children—their happy, healthy children—that could have been.

He can feel the velvet box prodding his thigh from the pocket that it rests in. He can feel the sweat on his palms, the nausea rising to his stomach, and the light-headed breathlessness that has captured his lungs. And maybe he doubted their future before, but now he’s doubting their present.

What if she says no? What if she isn’t ready for  _forever_ with him quite yet? What do they do then, how do they go back to what they had when she knows what he wishes they could have? How do they go on as they are if she says no? Does it ruin their relationship, drive them apart until they’re just two strangers on the street that they barely recognize when they meet fifty years down the line?

It’s this thought that kept him from proposing for the past few months. Tom has been incessantly good to him, incessantly kind to him as he rehearses his speech every day and tries to practice the words that will cement his and (Y/N)’s future together. He wants the words that start their little piece of forever to be perfect, but he finds that everything he writes falls short when it comes to her. Nothing could ever be perfect enough for her, but he hopes that he might be able to be perfect enough of a beginning.

As he kneels in front of her and watches the tears well in her eyes, watches her breath hitch in her chest and sees the dazed expression that crosses her features, he knows what her answer is going to be so clearly that he forgets to ask the question. Instead, he kneels there as she looks down at him with a breathlessly expectant expression. After a moment, he laughs and ducks his head down to attempt to hide the flush in his cheeks that threatens to spill down his neck.

“I suppose I’m supposed to ask you or say something, right?” He teases with a soft chuckle. People are looking at them now, waiting just as expectantly as (Y/N) for a well-rehearsed monologue to come tumbling out of his lips.

She’s nodding, laughing with him breathlessly as she pulls him up for a kiss. “It doesn’t matter what you say,” she murmurs as she kisses him breathlessly. It’s a wonder how she’s even managing to get the words out from their tangle of kisses. “I’m going to say yes no matter what, you div.”

As he laughs, breathless and happy among the cheers that erupt through the small crowd that formed, Haz knows that he’s made the right choice. He’s glad that their forever has begun, however fleeting it may turn out to be.


End file.
